In this context, documents of value are sheet-shaped objects, which, for example, represent a monetary value or an authorization and thus shall not be producible at will by unauthorized persons. Therefore, they have features not easy to produce, in particular to copy, the presence of which is a sign for the authenticity, i.e. the manufacturing by an authority authorized thereto. Important examples of such documents of value are chip cards, coupons, checks, vouchers and in particular bank notes.
Apparatuses of the above-mentioned type can be used for paying invoices, for example in shops. The machine handling of used bank notes, in particular of such being in a poor state, in such apparatuses can possibly lead to malfunctions, which have to be manually eliminated by a maintenance person. The elimination of such malfunctions depending on the structure of the apparatus can require a substantial expenditure of time. Here the disadvantage is that the apparatus cannot be used for payments during the time the malfunction has not yet been eliminated. Moreover, the maintenance person can support only few of such apparatuses, which increases the total operating costs.